Ground Spawns - Design

[John Adams]

Ok, been giving this a little more thought. It seems in most of our cases, these groundspawns are going to be harvest nodes - with the occasional "pickup" item for quest steps. The former being the 1,3,5,10+rare config, while the pickups are 1:1, harvest once, get the item once, done.

I'm sure there are other scenarios, but this conversation is strictly limited to the data we have on hand to work with - ie., T1-T2 nodes. We'll deal with other complexities when we get to them. :p

After reading those great dev posts, I am wondering if we could simplify our groundspawn_items table some. Instead of having 5-20 rows per node:

groundspawn_items1.jpg

... we could have 1 row, with a column for 1, 3, 5, imbue, rare, and rare+10 where we can set the percentage of success as discussed in both the dev threads and LE's input to this discussion. Something like this:

groundspawn_items2.jpg

As far as determining skill vs success (someone with a 5/5 Gathering skill vs someone with a 400/400 gathering skill on a T1 node), I think these percentage values might help keep things in balance - but we could also add another column as we discussed earlier, an overall % to determine success regardless of skill.

Citing this however (red):

Harvesting changes hit the live servers with LU24 (June 14), which allow you to receive more than one resource per harvesting attempt. You will no longer receive messages that harvesting an item is trivial for you, and on any harvest where your current skill is above the maximum skill raise cap for the area, you will not fail on a harvest. (In other words: if your gathering skill is 94/95 in Antonica, and the maximum you can raise gathering in Antonica is 95, you'll have a chance to fail on the harvesting attempt and/or receive a skillup. If your gathering skill is 105/105 in that same zone, however, you will no longer fail on a harvesting attempt.)

... I wonder if we should bother trying to make 400/400 fail, since I don't think they would on a T1 node anyway (?)

I also stuffed a `max_skill_value` field into the table, thinking maybe this could be a simple way to determine a success/fail score.

As to what your max skill-up on this node can be, I think this value `max_skill_value` might be better placed on the spawn_ground record, so it encompasses the entire node... or better yet, configure that on a zone-wide level (maybe in the zones table?) - this being the max skill you can achieve harvesting that tier. Keep in mind, while we're trying to emulate Live, making this easily configurable to server admins is the ultimate goal.


I am not sure if this will give us the ultimate configurability for groundspawns, but I think it might make implementation easier. And this "suggestion" is just that... something to open the floor to discussion, because I only barely grasp all that intellect in those dev posts so I really would like others to input on this before LE touches the code.

Thanks.

[LethalEncounter]

As far as determining skill vs success (someone with a 5/5 Gathering skill vs someone with a 400/400 gathering skill on a T1 node), I think these percentage values might help keep things in balance - but we could also add another column as we discussed earlier, an overall % to determine success regardless of skill.

Looks good, but I would add a min_score so that I can determine if the player should be given the chance to roll for the item.

[John Adams]

Ok, I didn't know what I could remove... like I still don't know what rare_level really means. Here's the thing that (continues to) confuse me about min_score, and we do not need to re-discuss it, I'm just sayin

If I am a player, and I am level 4, and my Gathering skill is 20/20, and a T1 node is set to 5 for the ultra rare+10 success (min_score = 5), I am probably going to score rare+10 at least 75% of the time. I've done this in testing on my own server.

In fact, oddly enough to me since I don't understand fully... I was 2/5 gathering skill, and 7 out of 10 harvests were 5 gathers. The only reason I didn't continue to get the rare+10 is that I was getting it nearly every time, so I removed them from my DB for now.

Anyway, not immediately, but whenever you decide/have time, we might change this structure if you think it makes sense. Another thing, when SOE Devs say "tables", I'm assuming they mean some list in memory and not a physical DB table heh... correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we need to add tons of `tables` for this.

[ZexisStryfe]

I know you guys are concentrating on harvesting with ground spawns in this thread, however I noticed something when playing around on Tess today.

On live, when you forage a shiny, it doesn't treat it like harvesting a node. It treats it like looting a corpse. Basically, you do the same 3 second harvest squat with progress bar, but at the end a loot window pops up and if you are in a group, the contents of the shiny are subject to the group looting rights (leader only, etc.). I am not sure if you guys knew this already, just figured I would prove I am still around...

[bolly]

Sorry to resurrect an older thread here but this seemed perfect to ask this question as it had lots of information in it

With harvesting if i have just 2 items in a groundspawn entry, one being a rare_item = 1, should i be seeing a .3% chance on the rare? cause it seems more like 50/50 atm

[John Adams]

Groundspawns, including the scenario Zexis mentioned months ago, are still under development. One thing we're waiting to implement is the fact that in one "grid" you may harvest a shell from a ?, and another you get a feather. Same "?", different loot.

This could be resolved without code if we made multiple "?" spawn IDs, but we're trying to avoid redundant spawns of the same type.

[bolly]

Ok thanks, I can just leave the entries in there as they are then and wait for you guys to do whats needed

[John Adams]

I'd like to resurrect this thread and get this finalized, at least in concept. Re-vamps are a way of life during Alpha, so don't get too whiny that I'm asking this to be changed hehe Lots of new bugs pouring in about harvesting, and I'd like to get this one out of the way.

Anyway, not immediately, but whenever you decide/have time, we might change this structure if you think it makes sense. Another thing, when SOE Devs say "tables", I'm assuming they mean some list in memory and not a physical DB table heh... correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we need to add tons of `tables` for this.

From my previous post: http://eq2emulator.net/phpBB3/viewtopic ... 792#p12792, I'd like to continue discussion on fixing these tables to be less busy, and sort out why skills, rolls, and rares do not seem to ever be what we expect them to be.

My homework will be to re-read this thread and see if I can't help design this to be as SOE-like as possible. Our DB tables are not horrible as they are, but I think they could be more efficient. But that's just the data... there's still an issue with harvesting itself. I think....?

[Arremis]

On live, when you forage a shiny...if you are in a group, the contents of the shiny are subject to the group looting rights...

What moron at SoE thought this was a good idea? One word comes to mind here...exploit...

Imagine a level 80 groups with a level 1 and goes off to a T8 zone and gathers shinys and declining so the level 1 can roll for "need" and fill up collections...

[ZexisStryfe]

Not really an exploit since collections are tradeable and can all be bought off the broker...

[SolarasX]

It actually was kind of a nice change when it went live tbh. At least if the healer ran off mid-fight to grab a glowie, the 5 corpses he/she abandoned had a shot at getting something out of the deal Plus most people on live have at least one max level characters to farm glowies for alts on, so can't say I ever saw this situation arise.

[John Adams]

At least if the healer ran off mid-fight to grab a glowie, the 5 corpses he/she abandoned had a shot at getting something out of the deal

So you have grouped with my g/f's cleric, I see?

Sammkie says, "SHINEY!!!!!11"

[ZexisStryfe]

Its amazing how a glowy little question mark can make people forget everything they are doing and create a mad dash...

[Arremis]

Putting the train back...oh shiney...back on track, I have a thought.

I don't think the harvesting skill is your chance to harvest a rare, but it makes more sense to me that the skill level is the measure of success in harvesting the node in general, and that the...oh another shiney...that the chance to loot 1, 3, 5, or 10+rare, is generated randomly like loot.

If you go on Live and watch, when you first start harvesting a tier, you spend more time failing to harvest than actually getting anything at all. Also, notice that regardless if your skill is maxed or not in any given tier, your chances of getting a rare are the same, even if you're harvesting a tier 4 levels below you. How many level 80's do you see with max skill harvesting in Antonica and getting a rare 90% of the time?

[ZexisStryfe]

While there is a random component to it, your harvesting still does matter. When you harvest three checks are rolled against your harvesting skill. First is success/failure, and then the second is which table to harvest from (there are two, one of which contains a much higher percentage chance at getting a rare) and the third is the roll on the table to determine what you harvest. Domino even has several thread on the official forums on how this works.

With your 400 (soon to be 450) harvesting skill, go back and harvest T1 nodes. You will be amazed just how many rares you harvest.